Customising the classroom: the rise of independent learning centres

Independent Learning Centres are flexible learning environments designed to fit those students who can't or won't be in a traditional classroom. Meet three south-east South Australian students who are succeeding the second time around and a Naracoorte teacher who says education should fit the student, rather than the other way around.

Sara Alfraij: 'I'm there to learn'

"I was a year younger than everybody else in my school in Syria. But I went to school here and got dropped back two years.

"I started Year 11 at 17, almost 18 and I just got sick of it. My English wasn't helping and neither were my teachers.

"I had an essay in English and I wanted to do it on a smaller book for children, not a big book that I couldn't read or understand.

I kind of swore at the teacher. I said something like 'this is f***ing hopeless, no one is helping me' and I got told I can't say those things in here, it's not Syria.

"They brought my parents in and then I dropped out and decided that drugs were a good idea. I was doing a lot of crack and I did acid and I was smoking a lot of pot.

"It really got to me that I couldn't finish school. I was angry at so many things.

"When I started working, my boss knew I wasn't going to any school and she told me if I signed up at the Mount Gambier Independent Learning Centre (ILC), I could finish my SACE (South Australian Certificate of Education) .

"I signed up and it was just the best thing I ever did.

"I finished my Cert 3 in Business and Hospitality and now I'm doing my South Australian Certificate of Education.

It just feels better in there — the vibe. You feel like everybody wants to help you. The teachers were so different and so much more understanding and helpful.

"It is not like when you were a kid. You can't be bothered stuffing around and talking about things that don't matter. You just want to get work done and go home.

"I'm there to learn. I'm really hoping to graduate this year.

"I won a leadership camp thing, called Rotary Youth Leadership Award (RYLA) and I went in May. It was wicked, I learned so much about myself.

"I learned to take things a little more seriously. I learned that I can set a goal and achieve it, no matter what it is.

"I got a tattoo for it, because it was life-changing.

"I want to finish my SACE and my foundation studies and then I want to start my social work studies. That's what I want to do. I just want to work with refugees from my country.

"When I graduate, I probably will get an ILC tattoo. Maybe something with a little graduation hat."

Gareth Hunter: 'You have to prove that you have actually finished something'

Tammy Schinkel: 'We don't have disengaged students here'

"The first question I ask them: 'why do you think this will work for you if other education facilities haven't'?

"I won't take anybody that it's not their choice to be here.

"People are much more accountable here than they have been before. There is nowhere to hide in the back of a classroom or nowhere to sit there and do nothing.

"I say to people it doesn't mean we do anything better or worse here to mainstream education, it's just a different system that works well for some people.

"Our attendance last year was 98 per cent. We don't have disengaged students here.

"I've taught in a mainstream school for 20 years before I came here. In a classroom of 35 kids, it's easy for kids to go under the radar.

"I think there is a still a stigma attached to Independent Learning Centres, no matter where they are.

"People may think there is something wrong with the people who go there, as opposed to there being something wrong with the system they've come from.

I've always said it is about not making people fit into the box, but making the box fit the people.

"When it is the right time and place for them, our door is always open.

"What inspires me and the thing that I love is the growth that I see in the students like Skye.

"Skye has been a student who has come and gone out of the ILC depending on life's circumstances and a lot of pretty major obstacles that would have knocked most people for six.

"I think for the first time in her life, she's got to the realisation that she is in control of her own destiny and is very conscious of wanting to break a mould in which she has been part of all her life.